Using representations for teaching and learning in science

There is now broad agreement that learners in primary and secondary school science need to know how to interpret and construct subject-specific ways of representing science activity and knowledge. There is also growing recognition that students are more motivated and learn more when they have opportunities to refine understandings through revising representations. Drawing on various theoretical perspectives and research studies into the implementation of this approach in classrooms across diverse topics, we propose a framework of pedagogical principles to gUide teacher use of this representational focus to enhance learning.